William Wallace 
Duncan 



William Wallace Duncan 



WILLIAM WALLACE DUNCAN 



AN APPRECIATION 
BY 

JOHN CARLISLE KILGO 



Privately Printed 
1908 



In Exchang® 
Duke University 
JUL I Z 1933 



FOREWORD 



President John C. Kilgo, of Trinity College, prepared 
the contents of this volume to be presented in manuscript 
form to the members of Bishop Duncan's family. He was 
for many years closely associated with Bishop Duncan 
and between them there existed the warmest and most 
intimate friendship. 

A number of Bishop Duncan's friends and admirers ex- 
pressed a desire to have a copy of this appreciation in 
permanent form, and Dr. Kilgo has kindly given us per- 
mission to have the manuscript printed. We are issuing 
this volume as a tribute of respect to one whose life and 
labors have been the richest benediction, and whose 
memory we cherish as a priceless heritage. 

It is very fitting that this tribute should come from 
Trinity College. He was one of its most loyal and sin 
cere friends, and was an alumnus in that he received the 
degree of Doctor of Laws from the institution. 

Albert Anderson W. J. Montgomery 

J. C. Angier H. M. North 

W. G. Bradshaw L. S. Overman 

Walter Brem H. A. Page 

J. F. Bruton W. H. Pegram 

R. I. Cheatham E. C. Register 

B. N. Duke J. H. Southgate 

W. P. Few W. E. Springer 

R. L. Flowers J. E. Stagg 

W. H. Glasson F. Stikeleather 

T. J. Jarvis C. W. Toms 

J. L. Kilgo J. W. Wadsworth 

F. S. Lambeth W. H. Wannamaker 

Edwin Mims F. A. Woodard 

J. C. Wooten 

June 20, 1908. 



WILLIAM WALLACE DUNCAN. 



i. 

As one who has toiled hard and toiled success- 
fully through a long summer's day falls at its 
close quietly to sleep without a restless moment 
or a disturbing dream, so, on the morning of 
March 2, 1908, Bishop William Wallace Dun- 
can quietly passed from earth. His work was 
done and, without a quiver, his heart ceased to 
beat, and the earthly career was ended. As one 
who knew him and loved him I want to tell some- 
thing about his great self and his heroic character 
as they appeared to me. 

I had passed out of the mimic life of child- 
hood and was fully into the earliest stage of 
youth when I first saw him. It was a good time 
for me to have one of his kind to come into the 
circle of my vision. For early youth is one of 
the richest periods of human life. It is the time 
of largest and most enthusiastic awakening. The 
imagination is then most active and most trust- 
worthy. Manhood with all its meaning, with 
all its big responsibilities, with all its glorious 



2 William Wallace Duncan. 



prospects, engages the imagination and sets it 
to work on aspirations and plans and far-away- 
dreams. The world has such large proportions, 
and the battle of life as it is being waged by real 
men has such an enticement for youth! The 
men of giant mold seem wrapt in a splendor that 
stirs youth's deepest ambitions and faiths. 

It was at this period that this splendid speci- 
men of manhood came into the circle of my 
thought, the realm of my life. I made no analy- 
sis of him. Youths are not philosophers. They 
do not work their way to conclusions by slow and 
laborious methods of thought. They have little 
use for logic, they know nothing of psychology. 
But they have intuitions — active, keen, bold in- 
tuitions. So they jump to conclusions, but they 
generally make a safe landing. And when I saw 
this magnificent illustration of manhood, then 
entering upon its fullness of form and energy — 
for he was at that time about thirty-eight years 
of age — I felt at once, as all who ever came into 
his presence have felt, that he was a man, and I 
yearned for that strange something in him which 
made him what he seemed to be — a real, a big, 
a noble man. 

Great men are not the products of chance, 
the creations of fate. We may be unwilling to 



William Wallace Duncan". 3 



believe that all of human character can be ex- 
plained by the laws of science, yet we are not 
willing to say that nothing of human character 
may be traced to its sources. We ask in all 
seriousness why was this man a marked man? 
Why was he so distinguished, having powers not 
given to all men and achieving things not within 
the reach of all other men? Such an inquiry is 
not only proper, but to a large degree it is 
answerable. 

Nature can tell some of the story; it knows 
some of the secrets. For nature is not a blind 
sort of jumbling of great heaps of matter, but 
rather it is God at work. It is old and has been 
at work through countless centuries, and it has 
a method of preserving its results, lest at some 
period it should become exhausted. This method 
of preserving forces is as true in spiritual and 
moral things as it is in physical things. Back of 
every distinguished man nature has done much of 
high work. He is the climax of a long history. 

The name Duncan which this good man wore 
is an old and an honorable name. In the tragic 
history of Scotland and in the eventful history of 
England in every generation for a thousand 
years, it has been celebrated by some immortal 
deed. In every field of honorable endeavor Dun- 



4 William Wallace Duncan. 



cans have won lasting fame. They have been 
kings, warriors, legislators, inventors, painters, 
musicians, sculptors, poets, philosophers, teach- 
ers and preachers. There is not on this globe a 
greater people than the Scotch, and in no other 
land has there been made finer history than has 
been made in Scotland. More than once the 
Scotch have been the saviors of all that is vital 
in our modern civilizations. And in the roster 
of her heroes no other name is more splendid 
than the name Duncan. 

Bishop Duncan never talked about his ances- 
try. He loved his father and his mother, but they 
were to him his parents, not the descendants of 
great ancestors. He would tell many fine things 
about his father — his opinions, faiths, habits, and 
wit. The purpose, however, which I have in 
mind does not require many facts of the family 
history. Bishop Duncan was the son of Professor 
David Duncan and Alice Amanda Pilmont. The 
father was born in Ireland and was a Scotch- 
Irishman, or rather, a Scotchman born in Ireland. 
He graduated from the University of Edinburgh, 
Scotland's great seat of learning. It was a good 
place for a young Scotchman to get his univer- 
sity training. Everything in Edinburgh had 
something to teach. There is not in the world a 



William Wallace Duncan. 5 



more picturesque city. The great mountains 
whose sides and tops are crowded with houses, 
and the far-stretching landscapes of hills and 
rivers and lakes make Edinburgh one of the 
most attractive cities of the world. But every- 
thing in the city was full of interest to a young 
student. There was the old castle crowning the 
rugged summit of Castlehill, and Holyrood 
guarding the foot of the mountain at the opposite 
end, while St. Giles Cathedral, standing between 
the two forts of royal life and tragic traditions, 
the throne from which the brave preacher, John 
Knox, uttered his maledictions against royal sin 
and papal despotism, were familiar sights to the 
young student. Every house was a volume of 
history, while not far away were Stirling Castle 
and Bannockburn and Melrose Abbey and Dry- 
burgh and Abbotsford. Centuries of legends and 
history were repeating their immortal stories to 
the college youth, stories that appealed to all that 
was noble and great and heroic in the spirit of 
youth. It was in this mold that the mental train- 
ing of the father of Bishop Duncan was formed. 
And when he went from the University into the 
English navy he was following the traditions of 
the Duncan family and yielding to the historic 
voices that had spoken to him during the years 
at college. 



6 William Wallace: Duncan. 



In the early part of the nineteenth century, 
when David Duncan was a student in the Univer- 
sity, the ideals and methods of education were 
not as they are today. Human knowledge was 
then confined within comparatively narrow lim- 
its. There were no sciences as we understand 
science, no social problems as we have them, and 
no international life with all its spheres of activ- 
ity as it is at this day. Then the modern agencies 
and instruments and other facilities of study were 
not in the dreams of the most renowned scholars. 
Mathematics, philosophy, theology, Greek and 
Latin were the main subjects, while the methods 
of teaching them would not be approved in these 
times of much learning and accurate scholarship. 
But somehow those methods and those studies 
made men — big, strong, daring, mighty men. If 
they gave small attention to the accents of Greek 
verbs and little time to the tenses of the subjunc- 
tive mood, they got at the heart of the people who 
lived and thought and wrought out civilizations 
with their literatures and arts and commerce and 
military triumphs. And after all is it not better 
to know Cicero than it is to tell why he used a 
certain tense? Is it not better to feel the force 
of Plato's doctrines than it is to quarrel over the 
proper syllable to accent? At least one thing is 



William Wallace Duncan. 7 



true, Professor David Duncan came to be at 
home with Greek authors and to make college 
boys feel the might of the Greek heroes. 

Professor Duncan quit the English navy, came 
to America and taught Southern youth, first in a 
high school in Norfolk, Virginia, then at Ran- 
dolph-Macon College in Virginia, and last at 
WofTord College in South Carolina. Bishop 
William Wallace Duncan was born December 
20, 1839, in the home of a college professor of 
of the classics. Both of the boy's parents were 
devout Christians. That was high birth. Of 
course, he was not born in the lap of material 
luxury, a luxury such as money can buy. It was 
a home where wise economy was cheerfully prac- 
ticed and in which a splendid simplicity pre- 
vailed. The show, the indolence, the extrava- 
gance, the artificiality, the indulgences, and the 
worldliness of wealth were not there to weaken 
and to dissipate mind and morals. But it was 
the home of a far better luxury than money can 
purchase — the luxury of learning, high thinking, 
pure living, genuine fellowships, fine companion- 
ships, and all things that make up great life. 
What a rich past breathed upon the children of 
the college home ! What a high level of thought 
and faith was that in which they began their 
earthly histories ! 



8 William Wallace Duncan. 



Bishop Duncan's birthplace was in Mecklen- 
burg county, Virginia. That is a good State in 
which to be born, and the year 1839 was a good 
time to start life. The first half of the nineteenth 
century was a period of marvelous awakening in 
the world, an awakening that marked the transi- 
tion from the old to the modern order of life. 
And upon Bishop Duncan the forces of this 
eventful period made lasting impression. It was 
the time in which science threw off the follies of 
scholasticism and went at the study of nature in 
a serious and earnest spirit, and the outcome was 
the railroad, the telegraph, the cotton gin, the 
sewing machine, and all the other discoveries and 
inventions that have changed not only the whole 
machinery of industry and commerce, but also 
the world's civilizations. Then there were great 
political problems that were stirring American 
thought and engaging the statesmanship of some 
of the greatest publicists this country has ever 
produced. When Bishop Duncan was a boy 
there were still living men who had seen Wash- 
ington and Jefferson, Franklin and Madison. He 
heard much of Webster and Clay and Calhoun, 
the three national leaders who were shaping the 
political thought of the two sections of the repub- 
lic. And when he entered college, Douglas and 



William Wallace; Duncan. 9 



Lincoln were in a desperate struggle for political 
supremacy. Emerson and Lowell and Whittier 
were in the prime of their strength. But not 
only were there remarkable men in the field of 
politics and letters, there were giants in the pul- 
pit of America. In the South, Leigh and Pierce 
and Bascom and men of their mold were pulpit 
leaders. Those were stirring times. There were 
great issues in state and in church, but there 
were mighty men to grapple with them. 

Wofford College was opened in the fall of 1854 
and among the young students who entered its 
first freshman class was Wallace Duncan, for his 
father, who had been for years a professor in 
Randolph-Macon College, had been called to the 
chair of Latin and Greek in this new South Caro- 
lina college. The faculty of Wofford was a small 
faculty, but the men who composed it were not 
weak men. Dr. Wightman, afterwards a bishop 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was 
president, and Dr. James H. Carlisle was profes- 
sor of mathematics. Perhaps some of Bishop 
Duncan's teachers lacked the professional train- 
ing required of college teachers at this time, 
but no youth ever had a teacher who could fill his 
mind and his spirit with more inspiration, who 
could stir his soul with higher motives, and who 



10 William Wallace Duncan. 



could appeal to every sense of honor with more 
irresistible power than could his young professor 
of mathematics. And after all that may be said 
about scholarship and the values of standards and 
methods, that which is most lasting and most 
potent in the life of the college graduate is not 
the amount of information he gets, but the mem- 
ory and the force of the strong man who uplifted 
his whole being. College graduates forget their 
Greek, but they never get rid of the transfiguring 
power of a lofty personality. With his father, 
who was a learned and a strong man, to direct 
and protect him, Bishop Duncan had rare oppor- 
tunities while he was a student in college. How- 
ever, it is true that he was not what is known 
as a "star student." He did his work, yet he 
belonged to that class of students whose active 
temperaments seem to unfit them for the patient 
and steady application of the scholar. 

During the formative period of Bishop Dun- 
can's character there was in the South a fine type 
of manhood and a superior order of social life. 
"The Southern gentleman" was not a myth, or 
a sectional conceit. He was a real type. Dignity, 
honor, courtesy, chivalry, simplicity, fairness, 
virility and bravery were some of the prominent 
traits of character which distinguished him and 



William Wallace: Duncan. 11 



gave him his wide reputation. Besides these ob- 
vious traits there was in him that indefinable 
something that made him majestic and threw 
about him a regal air. Free from all the artificial 
trappings of a cheap and conventional refine- 
ment, he was nature's gentleman. Nor was this 
the type of a single profession or a single class, 
but it was the type of the learned and of the un- 
learned, of those who had wealth and of those 
who did not have wealth, of those who lived in 
the city and of those who lived in the country. 
The high qualities of the Southern gentleman 
were never better illustrated than they were in 
the character and the conduct of Bishop Duncan. 

In what I have said up to this point I have only 
tried to outline something of the background of 
this good man's character and life. Centuries of 
history, cultured parents, refined home fellow- 
ships, superior intellectual companionships, the 
great transitions of thought and material prog- 
ress, the notable men who filled all the places of 
leadership, and the high ideals of social life were 
some of the rare forces and influences which, dur- 
ing the period of his childhood and youth, com- 
bined to shape his thought and his character. 



12 William Wallace Duncan* 



II. 

After graduating from Wofford College he 
entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, and joined the Virginia confer- 
ence. By what tokens he recognized his call to 
the office of the holy ministry is not a matter of 
concern. But to the personal assurance of this 
call his whole life bore unbroken proof. With 
him the ministry was not a profession, nor did it 
admit of one's engaging his thought with the 
ambitions which would be entirely legitimate to 
men in other callings. When Bishop Duncan 
gave himself to the work of the ministry he did 
it without mental reserve or conditions. Because 
of this completeness of consecration, this oneness 
of mind, through a ministry of fifty years, he 
was free from that feverishness which so often 
mars the characters of men and leads the world 
to suspect the quality of their purposes. 

That the call to the ministry is a prerogative 
which Christ has reserved for Himself, a right 
which He has never conferred upon synod or 
pope, is an article of faith steadfastly held by 
Methodist people. However, this belief does not 
interfere with the right of one to select for him- 
self the church in which he shall render his ser- 
vice. While one may safely claim for himself 



William Wallace Duncan. 13 



a divine call into the ministry, he has no sound 
basis for a divine order to the church in which he 
shall preach. Such a choice is left to the man. 
In the exercise of his own judgment he decides 
this question for himself. So Bishop Duncan 
was a preacher of the gospel by divine appoint- 
ment, he was a Methodist preacher by his own 
choice — a choice which he did not hesitate to 
make and one which he never dreamed of re- 
gretting. He knew when he entered the ministry 
what were the terms of its membership, the order 
of its work, the system of its government, and the 
probable returns for his labors. He had the 
right to stay out of it, but he chose to go into it. 
And having assumed its vows he was never res- 
tive under them. That ugly type of fretting 
which shows itself either in threats of rebellion or 
in the pettishness of an unholy temper was an 
abomination in his sight. Nor could he ever 
understand why one should chafe under the re- 
straints of his ministry. It is to the discredit of 
human nature that the man who brings least to a 
task is generally the most jealous of his dignity 
and exceedingly extravagant in the valuation of 
his contributions. Through a long and respon- 
sible ministry, covering a most eventful period of 
our American history, Bishop Duncan kept, with- 



14 William Wallace Duncan. 



out spot or blemish, the ministerial vows which 
he took at the altars of his church, and left to his 
church an example of fidelity that will abide as a 
holy inspiration, a legacy of immortal worth. 

He began his ministry as a pastor in the Vir- 
ginia conference and was associated with some of 
the most conspicuous men in his church, among 
whom was his own brother, Dr. James A. Dun- 
can. For a young man to begin his public work 
among a body of men who have attained large 
influence and wide reputation will have one of 
two effects on him. Either it will depress him 
or it will stir him with high aspirations. Which 
of these effects such surroundings will have upon 
a young man will depend upon the quality of his 
own spirit. If he is essentially weak, large men 
will depress him ; if he is well endowed, they will 
inspire him. There is a silent despotism in great 
characters against which young men should main- 
tain a sanctified rebellion, but against men of 
large mold they should never assert an arrogant 
and anarchistic antagonism. For the despotism 
of a mighty man is a wholesome thing if it be 
wisely interpreted and sanely regarded. 

In the case of this young itinerant, Wallace 
Duncan, there was not the slightest danger that 
great men would depress him. He was used to 



William Wallace Duncan. 15 



them. His education had introduced to him the 
immortal men of all ages and all civilized nations. 
Such companionship dignifies human nature and 
makes one feel at home among the great. Be- 
sides his education, he was born on the high level 
of a free manhood. So by the right of his train- 
ing and the affinities of his nature he was at 
home among commanding men. They did not 
embarrass him, they inspired him. To them he 
was at all times respectful, but before them he 
never was menial; from them he gathered 
strength, but he never allowed them to discour- 
age him; and he found in them the best of 
teachers, but kept them from being his despotic 
masters. 

Of his pastoral work I have only a general 
knowledge gained from isolated incidents, talks 
with those who were under his pastoral care, 
and such information as conversations with him 
gave me. To the closest friend he talked seldom 
of, and then told very little about, his own ex- 
periences. However, it is clear that he carried 
into his first work high ideals of what a preacher 
should be and what a preacher should do. His 
ideals were not merely entertaining dreams, but 
rather stern duties. They were voices to him 
which had in them the note of irresistible author- 



16 



William Wallace Duncan. 



ity. In the homes of his people and before the 
general public, whether in the streets or in the 
pulpit, he was at all times an example of neatness 
in dress, courtesy in manners, and propriety in 
conduct. He was in his appearance such a man 
as any member of his congregation, from the 
humblest to the most pretentious, would be glad 
to point out to a stranger as the pastor of his 
family. Yet he was all this without the marring 
effects of prudish care. His neatness and good 
manners were natural to him. 

It is true that when he was in the pastorate 
the duties of the office were not as complex and 
as difficult as they are at this time. Preaching and 
visiting were the chief things, while to these have 
been added within recent times many societies, 
large financial affairs, and endless social and 
general calls. The pastor must have care of all 
these affairs and meet the demands of a less sym- 
pathetic public. But to the duties required of 
him Bishop Duncan gave his constant care, espe- 
cially doing much work of an evangelistic kind, a 
work in which he took marked delight. He knew 
his people not only in a social way, but he knew 
their religious habits and conditions. He made 
it a business to know these things and to know 
them in detail — the number of children in the 



William Wallace Duncan. 17 



home and the name of each child, the class of lit- 
erature that circulated among his people, and 
all other matters that a pastor should know if he 
would wisely do his work. To the success of his 
pastoral work the abiding love of his former 
parishioners bears ample proof. Among the 
most precious friendships of his whole life were 
those formed between him and the members of 
his congregations. They always seemed to feel 
that they had a sort of proprietary right to him, 
and this was especially true among those who 
were the children in his churches. Nor did his 
elevation to the high office of the episcopacy ever 
disturb this sacred sense of fellowship. As I 
turned from his grave I saw in the great crowd a 
friend, and I went to speak with him. He had 
come from a distant city to pay this tribute to 
the memory of the good man. We spoke only a 
few words, but in tones of grief he said: "The 
Bishop was my pastor when I was a very small 
boy in Norfolk. I have loved him through all 
the years and I felt that I had to come to his 
burial." Nearly forty years stretched between 
the child in Norfolk and the sorrowing man at 
Bishop Duncan's grave. The grief of hundreds 
like this friend is the highest eulogy that could be 
paid the holy memory of a faithful and loving 
2 



18 William Wallace Duncan. 



pastor, a memory that through the years has 
lingered a sweet perfume to remind of sacred 
fellowships in other happy days. 

In 1875 the young pastor was elected to the 
chair of philosophy in Woflord College. But to 
his duties as a teacher were added the duties of 
financial agent, the object of which office was the 
raising of an endowment fund and the arousing 
of an educational interest among the people. At 
that time his distinguished brother, Dr. James A. 
Duncan, was president of Randolph-Macon Col- 
lege in Virginia and was pouring out his brilliant 
powers in heroic efforts to do in Virginia what 
the new professor in Wofford College was ex- 
pected to do in South Carolina. As necessarily 
more than half his time was spent away from 
college, he had the poorest opportunity to do the 
work of a teacher. Yet he managed to carry on 
his classes, though inevitably in an unsatisfactory 
way and with unsatisfactory results to him. But 
he impressed his students. If, in the technical 
sense, he fell below the standards of hard class- 
room work, his strong personality was one of the 
most telling forces of the college inithe formation 
of the mental and the moral character not only of 
his own classes, but of the community of stu- 
dents. His presence was educating because it 



Wiujam Wau,ace Duncan. 19 



was refining and exalting and invigorating. No 
other picture lingers more distinctly in the minds 
of the Wofford student during Bishop Duncan's 
connection with the college than the picture of 
his fine figure and his manly walk as he passed 
from his home through the pines to the college 
building. 

As financial agent and as an educational cam- 
paigner he rendered the State an epoch-making 
service. He came to it in the moment of su- 
preme crisis. The issues of the war and the 
subsequent misrule and political thievery had 
made life hard in the South. There was not 
lacking a feeling of hopelessness among hosts of 
Southerners. To throw off the fetters of misrule 
and rebuild destroyed institutions and reorganize 
a civilization under conditions of dire poverty, 
made a task, that seemed almost impossible to 
accomplish. It took more courage to face 
bravely this task than it required to fight the bat- 
tles of the war. Among the hard problems 
which demanded solution was the problem of 
Southern education. In the old South education 
had been ranked among the luxuries, but the 
new conditions arising out of the revolution 
which the war had wrought made it a necessity 
not only for the better classes of citizens, but for 



20 William Wallace Duncan. 



all classes of them. To this new necessity, this 
new interpretation of education, the people had 
to be aroused. There had to be created a new 
educational sentiment. And this was not an 
easy thing to do. The problem of bread and the 
problem of resuscitating industry were more 
pressing than the question of schools. Educa- 
tion could wait until the South should get itself 
into better shape politically and industrially. 
This was the situation when Bishop Duncan be- 
gan his campaign for education in South Caro- 
lina. In the light of present progress and of the 
enthusiastic interest in education, it is impossible 
to imagine the stupendous obstacles which con- 
fronted this man when alone he set himself to 
the task of arousing South Carolinians to the 
great work of educating their children. 

Nor should it be forgotten that the State col- 
lege was at that time in the hands of political 
misrule and was open to the colored race. The 
public school system was not only a farce, it was 
a disgraceful fraud. The State was prostrate 
and could do nothing to promote education. The 
burden of this work fell upon the church colleges, 
and Wofford College was the first college in the 
State to undertake the task of creating an edu- 
cational sentiment among the people. For ten 



William Wallace Duncan. 21 



years Bishop Duncan gave his whole strength of 
body and of mind to this work. His soul was in 
it, and, measured by the highest standards, there 
has not been in the history of South Carolina a 
more heroic example of unselfish patriotism and 
a finer illustration of splendid statesmanship than 
this man displayed during those ten years of 
arduous labors in behalf of the children and 
youth of the State. In every city, in every 
town, in every village, in every region of the 
country, by day and by night, his eloquent voice 
was heard pleading with the people for the edu- 
cation of the young. Amid all the confusion of 
that period of political revolution he fought the 
battle of education. Today it is popular to urge 
the cause of the schools ; then it was not popular. 
But the unpopularity of the cause seemed to 
inspire this man. He put the cause on the con- 
science of the church, he aroused the ministry 
and made of them an army of preachers of edu- 
cation, he stirred merchants and bankers and 
manufacturers and farmers and mechanics. He 
was opposed especially by leading politicians, but 
none of these things moved him. 

Now that conditions have changed in the 
South and education has become the pet cause of 
politicians and educators and of men in other 



22 William Wallace Duncan. 



sections of the nation, there is a disposition to 
forget, even to ignore, the heroic work of those 
who bravely cleared away the rubbish of de- 
stroyed faiths and social orders and laid deep 
and broad and strong the foundations upon 
which the structure of the new order rests. 
But justice and honor unite in demanding that 
these men be given the highest place among 
Southern statesmen in the halls of educational 
fame. Dr. James A. Duncan in Virginia, Bishop 
Duncan in South Carolina, Bishop Haygood in 
Georgia, and later Bishop Galloway in Missis- 
sippi and Bishop Candler in Georgia, did more 
to create the progress of Southern education than 
any other men who have wrought in the South 
since the war. To Bishop Duncan the State of 
South Carolina owes a debt of gratitude which 
every sense of justice requires should be ap- 
praised at its true worth and celebrated in a 
manner becoming the patriotic service he so 
wisely and so faithfully rendered the common- 
wealth. Standing upon the foundations which 
he laid and buttressed by the strong sentiment 
which he created, the whole structure of public 
and church education in South Carolina is a 
lasting monument to his unequalled labors, 
while to him must be most largely credited the 



William Wallace Duncan. 23 



supreme place which Wofford College has held 
for more than twenty-five years among the col- 
leges of the State. And my knowledge of the 
facts makes it safe to say that, in proportion to 
his wealth, he gave more to the cause of educa- 
tion than any other South Carolinian has given 
since Benjamin Wofford lived. The thousands 
of children and youth in the State who today fill 
its schools and its colleges should always remem- 
ber that this good man, this wise statesman, 
hewed the way through a dense wilderness and 
gave them access to the benefits of education. 

At the General Conference of 1886, held in 
Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Duncan was elected to 
the episcopacy, the highest office in his church. 
That he was the first of four who were elected at 
that time shows the prominence he had attained 
as a churchman. This was not a created promi- 
nence, it was an irresistible prominence, one that 
followed as a logical result from the high order 
of the man and of his work. He had been a 
member of the General Conferences of 1878, 
held in Atlanta, Georgia, and of 1882, held in 
Nashville, Tennessee, but the records of these 
conferences show that he was not one of the 
speaking members. As a member of any delib- 
erative body he was noticeably retiring. He did 



24 William Wallace Duncan. 



not have the peculiar faculty of presenting many 
resolutions and of defending any measure with- 
out a moment's warning. He rarely spoke before 
the body, and then his speeches were short. I 
once asked him why he followed this policy and 
his reply was : "What good would it do ? Others 
like to do such things and I am entirely willing 
that they should do them, though I am also per- 
suaded that the majority of them would render 
a better service if they would talk less. But you 
know some men feel like old Atlas — the whole 
world rests on their shoulders." However, this 
habit in him as a member of conferences was 
nothing else than one of the points at which his 
timidity manifested itself. By no method did 
he ever seek to make himself prominent. He 
never took his destiny in his own hands. He left 
the issues of his life to the simple merit of his 
labors. So his prominence in his church was 
nothing else than the prominence which fidelity 
to work forced upon him. 

But he was eminently fitted for the grave 
duties of the episcopacy. Aside from his dis- 
tinguished and commanding address and other 
physical traits of leadership, he was a man who 
had rare business talents, deep insight into hu- 
man nature, an excellent poise of mind, a wide 



William Wallace: Duncan. 25 



compass of vision, a notable power to put things 
in their right relations, a striking ability to dis- 
cern between the essential and the non-essential, 
a remarkable capacity of final decision, a genuine 
and manly sympathy, and withal he was a su- 
perior judge of men. These were some of the 
qualities he had for the work and office of a 
bishop, and the long and laborious service he 
gave the church fully vindicated its wisdom in 
placing on him the responsibilities of the episco- 
pacy. In all truth it may be said that he was a 
bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
according to the discipline of his church. No 
man ever took on himself the vows of the office 
at the altars of his church who had a deeper 
sense of their meaning and more completely ded- 
icated himself to all the duties involved in the 
episcopal vows. 

Though he was a man who possessed the virtue 
of high-mindedness and was sensitive to all 
things of honor, he was utterly free from put- 
ting the honors of his office above the responsi- 
bilities of it. To him the episcopacy was not an 
office of "absolute authority," but an office of 
terrible responsibilities. He did not shrink from 
doing his duty as he saw it, but he never sought 
to protect himself behind the breastworks of 



26 William Wallace Duncan. 



official authority, nor did he ever defy criticism 
by flaunting in its face a despotic interpretation 
of his official prerogatives. He showed that he 
was large enough to be unconscious of official 
superiority and great enough to be conscious of 
the meaning of authority. 

Bishop Duncan, Bishop Galloway, Bishop 
Hendrix and Bishop Key were elected to the 
episcopacy at a period of transition in the church. 
Methodism had given its energies almost wholly 
to evangelistic work and had brought together in 
a great and growing organization a host of people 
of all classes spread across the whole country. 
Methodism had to learn to do the work of the 
pastorate. These people were to be trained and 
the vast resources which they commanded were 
to be rightly used. This was a new work. The 
Methodist preacher had been an evangelist and 
now he had become a pastor. The whole church 
had to be shaped to this new dispensation of 
things. Church buildings and other equipment 
had to be rebuilt or renovated. It was a hard 
task that faced these new bishops, but three of 
them were young men, full of faith and zeal, and 
they seemed to know the work before them. 

With his large vision and his keen business 
judgment Bishop Duncan measured his task and 



Willi am Wallace: Duncan. 27 



at the beginning fixed for himself the things he 
would labor to achieve. There was a deliberate 
purpose, a definite aim in his work. For the 
ministry he was a circulating chair of pastoral 
theology, especially for the young preachers. The 
vast majority of Methodist preachers had had no 
training in theological schools, while only a small 
proportion had had even a college training. Yet 
the work of the church called for well equipped 
men. That he might come in closer touch with 
the preacher and his work, Bishop Duncan made 
much of the district conference, attending as 
many of them during the year as it was possible 
for him to attend. This conference of the church 
gave the opportunity to investigate into the details 
of the work of the ministry and to correct unfor- 
tunate and hurtful habits. All who ever attended 
a district conference presided over by him know 
with what minute care and persistence he in- 
quired into all the affairs of pastoral work. And 
when a pastor could not tell the number of church 
papers taken by his people, whether the stewards 
owned disciplines and conducted family prayers, 
the number of young people in church schools, 
and showed a lack of definite information as to 
any part of his duties, it was the occasion for 
rebuke and often burning exhortation. Many 



28 William Wallace Duncan. 



preachers charged him with harshness, but this 
did not change his aims, though it gave him 
great grief. However, the main thing was not 
his popularity, but the making of strong and 
accurate pastors for the church. Nobody ever 
saw him rebuke an imaginary blunder or exhort 
a man of straw. Now that the faithful servant 
has ended his labors and his wonderful work 
stands in the full perspective of his life, it is 
clear that Southern Methodism has wiser and 
more efficient pastors because he went through 
the church correcting their mistakes and exhort- 
ing them to better ideals. 

The most delicate, as it is the most difficult, 
function of the Methodist episcopacy is the ap- 
pointment of the preachers to the pastoral charges 
of the conference. The responsibility of this 
work is placed by the law of the church upon the 
bishop. From his judgment there is no appeal. 
So in the final analysis the destiny of the itin- 
erancy is in the hands of the bishop, and that it 
has been successfully worked for more than a 
century in this republic is a high tribute to both 
the character and the judgment of the men who 
have hitherto administered the system. When the 
preachers and the people lose confidence in the 
judgment or the motives of the episcopacy, the 



William Wallace Duncan. 29 



itinerancy will come to an end. In the perform- 
ance of this function of his office Bishop Duncan 
inspired the confidence of the church. All knew 
that he was far above any sort of discreditable 
motives, and that his wisdom and patient care 
fitted him for this difficult work. Preachers who 
criticised him — and he knew of their criticisms — 
received his kindest consideration in the making 
of their appointments. But the welfare of the 
church was always the main thing he considered. 
To this policy he strictly adhered. He did not 
move men for the fun of moving them, he did not 
move them to gratify worldly laymen, he did not 
move them to gratify the ambitions of the preach- 
ers ; he only moved them when in his godly judg- 
ment the interests of church required a change. 
For two reasons he often said he was opposed to 
moving men. First, it made the ministry restless, 
and, secondly, a move was a costly and a painful 
thing to the preacher and his family. The doc- 
trine of rotation for the sake of rotation was 
abhorrent to him, and he spoke of it in strong 
terms of condemnation. He did not regard the 
itinerancy as an ecclesiastical lottery manipulated 
by a bishop for the gain or honors of the minis- 
try. I have heard many presiding elders who 
assisted him in making the appointments pro- 



30 William Wallace Duncan. 



nounce him one of the most careful, sympathetic, 
and patient men in the work of his cabinets. 
This is a tribute which men in all parts of the 
church gladly paid him. 

The one thing which seemed to give him su- 
preme anxiety in the matter of making appoint- 
ments was the comfort of the wife and the chil- 
dren of the preacher. In fact, his concern for 
them nearly unnerved him. He said the preacher 
was a man and could care for himself. Besides, 
he was constantly the guest in homes which be- 
stowed upon him the best possible hospitality, but 
the mother of his children and the children were 
alone in the parsonage, frequently in a miser- 
ably located parsonage, and upon them fell the 
brunt of the itinerancy. 

The Methodist preacher's wife and children 
had in Bishop Duncan a genuine, a faithful, and a 
devoted friend, and they were his friends. I 
recall an afternoon session in a district confer- 
ence over which he was presiding. He had been 
inquiring minutely into the condition of church 
property, and especially into the location and 
condition of the parsonages in the district. He 
had severely rebuked much carelessness which 
his inquiries had discovered. At the conclusion 
of this investigation, with deep but controlled 



Wiixiam Waixace Duncan. 31 



emotion he said: "Brethren, I am deeply con- 
cerned about the homes in which the wives and 
children of these preachers live. I am not so 
much concerned about the preacher. He is much 
from home and gets the best the people can af- 
ford. But his wife and his children stay at the 
parsonage you have provided for them. That 
good, patient, and heroic woman who has gone 
into this itnerancy deserves the best of care. She 
has in her tender heart all the love of home with- 
out the hope of ever having a home. Her little 
children whom she loves more than she loves her 
life can never have a home of their own. She 
has given up all these noblest ambitions of a wo- 
man's pure heart and gone into this work with 
her husband. Oh ! what lonely hours these itiner- 
ant mothers see! What sadness there is in their 
lives ! They cannot even stay near the graves in 
which they put their precious little ones. I stood 
a few weeks since in a country graveyard by the 
side of a slab on which was inscribed the name of 
little Mary, who had died when her father and 
his family were on the circuit. They were then 
two hundred miles away. As I stood there I 
seemed to see the mother sitting in the lonely 
parsonage thinking of the little grave she had left 
behind her and wondering if anyone ever put a 



32 



William Wallace Duncan. 



flower on the mound. I wondered how often in 
thought that precious mother came to the grave 
in the country churchyard. Well, she cannot care 
for the grave of Mary, but must go on the way 
of duty. Thank God, the time will come when 
she will have a home in the Father's mansion and 
little Mary will be with her. Brethren, be good 
to these precious wives of your preachers." This 
is a sample of the holy sympathy he had for the 
homes of the Methodist itinerants, a sympathy 
worthy of a bishop as it is worthy of a big- 
souled man. 

As a presiding officer Bishop Duncan was 
strict, accurate, and duly cautious. While he 
knew the law of his church as well as parliamen- 
tary law and was strict in the enforcement of 
both, he did not impress the bodies over which he 
presided as one who was a stickler for worthless 
things, or as one who made a specialty of study- 
ing the technical details of law. He was not what 
the public would call a brilliant presiding officer, 
but he was what was of far more importance, a 
correct and an entirely trustworthy president of 
a body. He adhered with consistency to that 
injunction of the discipline that preachers are to 
obey the law, not to amend it. And when he 
attended a conference in which loose customs had 



William Wallace Duncan. 33 



been developed he was quick to discover them and 
faithful in correcting them. Especially was he 
a master at a moment of confusion. He never 
lost his head. He seemed least confused when 
others were most confused, and at such a critical 
moment he saw at a glance the center of the dif- 
ficulty and the remedy for it, and his power of 
decision and his commanding mind eminently 
fitted him to control the situation. 

Bishop Duncan was not a specialist in his 
official administration of the affairs of the church. 
He did not throw the weight of his influence 
upon one enterprise, but he gave due consid- 
eration to all its enterprises. The security and 
care of church property, the financial methods 
of church boards, all the interests of the vari- 
ous societies of the church, as well as the doc- 
trinal unity, the spiritual growth, and the peace 
of the church were equally important and fully 
emphasized by him. He had little patience with 
carelessness on the part of either pastors or offi- 
cial laymen in attending to all the affairs com- 
mitted to them. Perhaps the following incident 
will show the deep concern which he felt for all 
the interests of the church's life and work. 
Within the bounds of a circuit, inaccessible by 
railroad, there had sprung up bitter strife grow- 

3 



34 William Wallace Duncan. 



ing out of political differences and party antago- 
nisms. Not only did this strife rend the church, 
but it involved the peace and success of the pas- 
tor. To do what he could to restore harmony, 
Bishop Duncan, in the snows of the winter, trav- 
elled more than five hundred miles to attend a 
quarterly meeting on the charge and to preach to 
the people and to do all else within his power to 
bring about harmony among them. This ex- 
ample of his genuine concern for the welfare of 
that charge is an illustration of how he carried on 
his heart and on his mind all the burdens of the 
church. 

His active interest in the work of education 
was a natural interest, while his experience at 
Wofford College made him a most competent ad- 
viser in matters of education. For years he was 
the chairman of the board of trustees of Wofford 
College, a member of the board of trust of Van- 
derbilt University, and chairman of the board of 
trustees of the Payne Institute, a college for the 
colored people. He regularly attended the meet- 
ings of these boards and kept himself informed 
as to all the conditions and movements of these 
institutions. The sense of personal responsibility 
which he felt toward the official relation he sus- 
tained to them was illustrated in a most striking 



William Wallace Duncan. 



35 



and most pathetic manner in his last visit as a 
trustee to Vanderbilt. The University was in- 
volved in a controversy and this meeting of the 
trustees was felt to be a very important, even 
somewhat critical meeting. Bishop Duncan was 
exceedingly feeble, for the disease which took 
him away had already made fearful advance. 
He was physically unable to attend the meeting 
of the board, but he did not think he should 
absent himself. Amid the excitement and the 
necessary strain of the commencement occasion, 
all his friends thought it wholly advisable that he 
should return home. Their opinion was made 
known to him by one who had his confidence. 
His reply was characteristic: "I shall stay until 
the board finally adjourns. It is a critical time. 
Jim [the familiar name by which he called Chan- 
cellor Kirkland] needs me and to desert him at 
such an important moment would be unfaithful, 
and I could never make him understand. Be- 
sides, my duty is here, and I shall stay to the 
end." When assured that Chancellor Kirkland 
would not censure him, he insisted, "Jim has 
always been faithful to me, and I shall stay, for 
he may need me." And the feeble man remained 
where he thought both duty and friendship called 
him, though all knew that not only his own com- 
fort, but the interests of his life called him home. 



36 



William Wallace Duncan. 



Just after he had been elected to the episcopacy 
a very prominent member of the General Con- 
ference asked Dr. James H. Carlisle, "Can Wal- 
lace Duncan preach up to the standard of a 
bishop?" Dr. Carlisle replied, "Wallace Duncan 
at his best is equal to the best." That may be 
taken as a fair judgment of him as a preacher. 
He was a great preacher. Not a profound ex- 
positor of the Scriptures after the type of Bishop 
Wilson, not a master of facts marshalled with 
irresistible logic like Bishop Haygood, not an 
interpreter of the mystical depths of truth like 
Bishop Keener, not an imperial orator like Bishop 
Galloway, but after his own manner he was a 
great preacher. He was always practical in his 
pulpit aims, belonging to the type of preachers 
to which Phillips Brooks belonged. His preach- 
ing was inspired by some problem that was to be 
solved. His eye was always on the movements of 
men, and, like a prophet of Israel, he sought to 
point out the way of truth and of righteousness 
and to convince men of the truth. He never 
made what is usually called a set sermon. On 
the contrary, the theme and the treatment of the 
theme were chosen in the light of some need 
which appealed to him. To him the world was a 
working world, men were toilers at desperate 



William Wallace Duncan. 



37 



tasks, and the issues of destiny were in all the 
duties and labors of men. As a preacher he 
must be estimated in the light of his own view 
point, in the light of his own convictions. 

He had all the fine physical equipment of a 
great preacher. In this respect no man in the 
American pulpit in his time, if even in any other 
time, was his superior. Force and grace were 
combined in every movement, while his wonder- 
ful voice under full control gave him a wide 
range of physical expression and a rare power of 
emphasis. He was an eloquent preacher. It was 
not a premeditated eloquence, one that patiently 
clothed itself in the fine forms of rhetoric, not the 
sustained eloquence of which Bishop Pierce was 
a master. It was the eloquence of awful impulse, 
the explosion of deep feeling, the rush of a de- 
fiant purpose. Dr. Broadus says that eloquence 
is extremely practical, and this was the type of 
eloquence displayed by Bishop Duncan. From 
the moment he began his sermon or his address 
he was strikingly clear and engaged the full at- 
tention of his audience, but when he came to a 
climax in the development of his theme and 
wished to enforce the truth which he had pre- 
sented, his own soul all aglow with a spiritual 
light, his spirit burning with consuming convic- 



38 William Wallace Duncan. 



tion, and his mind inspired with heroic allegiance 
to duty, then he burst forth with a torrent of 
eloquence that had in it the rush of an over- 
whelming force which swept his audience before 
it. He did not intend to be eloquent, he could 
not avoid it. He was himself swept by the same 
impulse that swept his listeners. In such mo- 
ments he was superb in description and appeal. 
Then he was at his best and he was equal to the 
best. 

But great preaching must be measured by the 
impressions it makes. Preaching is a peculiar 
type of speaking. It is more than stating the 
truth. It is stating the truth and quickening the 
spirits of men. Many exceedingly fine preachers 
are exceedingly poor, even unbearably poor, 
preachers, not because what they say is not mag- 
nificently said and logically correct, but with all 
this it is poor preaching, simply because it does 
not stir the conscience, quicken the faith, and 
inspire the moral force in men. Does the sermon 
convince and move men? This is the standard 
by which all men, the learned and the unlearned, 
judge a sermon. The preaching of Bishop Dun- 
can produced these results to a wonderful degree. 
He made men think, he made them feel, he made 
them act. His sermons stayed with his hearers. 



William Wallace: Duncan. 39 



Many vital truths he fixed in the minds of the 
people in the form of striking epigram and im- 
pressive illustration. His congregations went 
away from the church with a sense of definite 
elevation and a compelling desire for holy things 
and noble living. But chief among all the moral 
sentiments he aroused in men was the virtue of 
heroism. He would have been a good man to 
preach to a martyr just before his execution. 
The sermon would have nerved him for his suf- 
ferings. By these tests I give Bishop Duncan a 
high place in the roster of great preachers, and 
the tests are the highest tests by which to judge 
a sermon and to estimate a preacher. 

III. 

Somewhere in his Quillian Lectures Bishop 
Hendrix says, "Progress is not the creature of 
circumstances, but of personality." This reverses 
the popular method of studying the man from 
the point of his record, and establishes the only 
correct method, that of studying the record 
from the point of the personality. The man is 
before the history, he is the key to the history. 
So Joseph Parker maintained that Christ was the 
explanation of His miracles, not His miracles 
the explanation of Him. There are exceptional 



40 



William Wallace Duncan. 



men who have the masterly power of making a 
first impression, that is, impressing the minds 
of men distinctly and forcefully at first sight. 
It matters not when you meet them or where you 
meet them, they leave their mark, distinct and 
abiding. They force acquaintance. They take 
possession of you. This is a rare power, given 
to comparatively few men. But it would be dif- 
ficult to find a man who possessed it to a higher 
degree than Bishop Duncan. There is no rule by 
which this strange type of genius may be ex- 
plained. Men do not wish to explain it, they do 
not stop to question it. They accept it and they 
admire it without the thought of prying into its 
elusive genius or resisting its superior force. 
They know that it is not an art, but a divine gift, 
and they stand before it as though they were in 
the presence of a sacred altar. 

Cast in the mold of strong manhood and 
dominated by its spirit, he was preeminently a 
man of action, a doer of things. He had all the 
nervous restlessness of a man driven by an irre- 
sistible determination, a sort of impatience that 
resented the idea of inactivity. To one of such a 
temperament inactivity is a severe punishment. 
He must have something to do. His mind is 
constantly in search of some new field of opera- 



WiivUAM Wallace Duncan. 41 



tion. By every trait of character Bishop Duncan 
was a man of this kind. He had no ability to 
rest, to be quiet. It was as necessary for him to 
be at work as it was for him to have food. This 
disposition may not be the ideal disposition, for 
every man should be able, at some time, to relax 
his mind and his body and come to a complete 
standstill. There is a center in the seas that can 
call the wild waves to quiet, and there is a force 
in the forest that can bring the storm swept trees 
to a hush. And so a man should cultivate the 
power to rest, but Bishop Duncan did not culti- 
vate it and in truth he did not have it. Nor did 
he seem to think it worth cultivating, for he 
always peremptorily dismissed the exhortations 
of his friends that he should rest. 

It was this disposition that made it impossible 
for him ever to have been a scholar. He was not 
indifferent to scholarship, he did not underrate 
its worth, he did not lack an appreciation of 
scholarly ideals, but by nature he was designed 
for other things. Scholarship is the achievement 
of patient research. I\ot only does it require 
mental strength, it requires the power to shut 
one's self away from the world and divorce one's 
self from all the affairs of industrial activity. 
Bishop Duncan could not do this, though he ap- 
preciated the man who could. 



42 William Wallace Duncan. 



But Bishop Duncan was a student. He was a 
most thoughtful reader, always having some 
book in easy reach whether he was in his library 
or whether he was on some trip. However, the 
books which interested him most were biogra- 
phies, especially the biographies of the most 
heroic men. It is easy to see why a man of his 
type of mind should like biography. It was the 
story of a man, truth in living form. Beside 
biographies he naturally read those books which 
dealt in a practical way with the pressing prob- 
lems of society. He liked Freemantle's "The 
World as the Subject of Redemption'' more than 
he liked Liddon's "The Divinity of Jesus;" he 
preferred the sermons of Phillips Brooks to 
those of Frederick D. Maurice; he read with 
more delight the addresses of John Caird than 
Butler's "Analogy," and he found more profit in 
reading Edersheim's "Life of Christ" than in 
reading Ottley's "The Doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion." Through magazines and the best class of 
other current literature he kept well informed on 
all the movements of the day in all quarters of 
the earth. He also read standard literature and 
the works of modern writers. Entirely free from 
the slightest tinge of pedantry, he loved learning 
but never paraded it. For the high and serious 



William Wallace Duncan. 43 



uses of knowledge he had a sacred regard, but 
for the adornments of it, the mere glitter of schol- 
arly reputation, he had little tolerance. 

To him the Bible was not only the book of 
God, but the god of books. During the first half 
of the nineteenth century the Holy Scriptures 
held the place of preeminence among books. It 
was read systematically, and a knowledge of it, 
even among the uneducated classes, was far 
greater than it is at this time among many of the 
best educated men and women. In the early 
years of Bishop Duncan's life he was trained by 
his devout parents to read the Bible in an earn- 
est, devout, and habitual way. Early in the 
morning when his mind was fresh and before 
anything had occurred to distract his attention, 
he read the Scriptures. Nor was this habit 
broken by his surroundings. Whether at home 
or in the home of another or on the train, he 
observed faithfully this custom of daily studying 
the Bible. And the copy which he carried on his 
long journeys shows many signs of long and per- 
sistent use. It is marked from beginning to 
end. He did not read the Bible as a religious 
fad, a sort of religious exercise for the comfort 
of conscience, but he read it for its divine truth. 
Often would he raise his eyes from the page, 



44 William Wallace Duncan. 



his face showing marks of meditation, while 
he was evidently enraptured by some holy im- 
pression or profound thought. From these mo- 
ments of suspended reading he would awake as 
from a reverie and return to the book. To see 
him read his Bible was a good lesson in the study 
of holy things. 

That he did not write has seemed strange to 
many. He had fine academic training, he was 
brought up in an academic home, and he had 
much contact with academic men. Then why 
did he not write? To those who knew him 
thoroughly this is no strange thing. He did not 
have the writing nerve. He was afraid of the 
pen. He dreaded the ink bottle. No man could 
put in clearer and more forceful words the idea 
he wished to express, but his ability to do this did 
not displace his fear of the pen. He even trem- 
bled when a friend undertook to write an article 
or a book, and he was full of caution in his ad- 
vice. Then, the pen was to him a tedious method 
of expression. It takes a high order of patience 
to talk through a pen, and his restless, active 
nature made the act of writing a heavy burden. 
Besides there was in his strong composition an 
element of timidity. Perhaps many may doubt 
and others may positively deny the assertion, but 



William Wallace Duncan. 



45 



the fact remains that it was in him, and con- 
sciously in him. He had a fine art of subduing 
it, yet one who was much with him knew this 
element of his nature. And it was most sensitive 
toward the matter of writing. It made him 
underrate his ability to write, and underestimate 
everything that he wrote. In every great charac- 
ter there are qualities that put checks on strong 
traits. It is well that it is so. And in this strong 
man's character a fine element of timidity was a 
restraining power over him. 

The gamut of his wonderful nature and of his 
high character seemed to have in it all the notes 
of noble life. There were the heroic notes, 
strong and clear, and when they were struck they 
gave forth the rapid rush of a great chorus as it 
reaches a sublime climax. It was the music of 
the storm, it was the spirit of the battle, it was 
the soul of the conqueror. When the occasion 
called for it he could rise to the most desperate 
task. Truth and duty never found him halting 
and calculating and cringing. He knew full well 
the voice of duty and did not mistake an impulse 
of his own hear* tor a mandate of duty, nor did 
he mistake a personal prejudice for a line of right- 
eousness. He knew the distinction between these 
things. So, when the imperatives of duty were 



46 



William Wallace Duncan. 



upon him, his soul was ablaze with quenchless 
courage, his heart was nerved with the strength 
of iron, and he threw himself into his work with 
mighty force. 

Bishop Duncan was not what men call a 
fighter. He did not love contention, he did not 
seek a battle, but when a conflict was inevitable, 
when the cause of justice and right came in un- 
avoidable conflict with error, he did not offer 
compromise, he did not shun the struggle. While 
he was not a fighter, the blood of the warrior was 
in him. I never saw him in a controversy except 
once. At the time he was a professor at Wofford 
College and a member of the South Carolina 
conference. For some time there had been grow- 
ing criticism against some policy in the manage- 
ment of the college. Of this criticism Dr. Dun- 
can, as he was then called, had known. Finally 
the issue came. The opposition was led by men 
of influence and force. It was evident that there 
was to be a battle between the giants. When it 
was on, Dr. Duncan seemed to be unusually quiet. 
He submitted to all interrogations and answered 
them calmly and fully. At last his time came. 
There was grim determination written in every 
line of his face. The attitude of his body, the 
tones of his voice and the flash of his eye served 



William Wallace Duncan. 47 



notice on all that he asked no quarter and that he 
would grant none. He brought forth the facts 
upon which he relied for the defense of his 
cause. Then he steadily built them into an im- 
pregnable argument, and, his argument being 
complete, he hurled himself against the position 
of his opponents with the rush and force of a 
battle charge. His magnificent figure towering 
to its fullest height and quivering with indigna- 
tion, his fine gray eyes flashing terrible defiance, 
and his great voice ringing out its imperial notes, 
he swept everything before him and sat down a 
hero in the eyes of his hearers. It was one of 
those exceptional hours that one never forgets. 

But what a mysterious genius nature shows in 
the wonderful blending of extremes into glorious 
harmonies! The mountain and the valley com- 
pose the landscape and its beauty is in the con- 
cord of them. In the roar of Niagara one seems 
to hear the blending of many notes. Even on its 
turbulent and violent bosom shifts and shines 
with heavenly grace a perpetual rainbow. Na- 
ture's diapason seems to have no limit. Heav- 
en's music is written upon an immeasurable 
scale. The eternal keynote of redeeming love 
brings into harmonious music the splendors of 
the Transfiguration, the shades of Gethsemane, 



48 



William Wallace Duncan. 



the blood and groans of Calvary. The logical 
consistency of the universe is in those depths of 
a mysterious unity; the discords of good and 
evil will be understood when men come to know 
the laws of eternal harmony. 

So Bishop Duncan was not only a man of 
heroic mold, but he was a man of gentle soul. If 
the mighty notes were in his nature, no less dis- 
tinct were the softer notes. He loved everything 
that was fine and gentle and beautiful. He loved 
flowers and music and paintings and everything 
else that a fine soul should love. His magnificent 
voice could descend with the ease and grace of a 
grand organ from the strong tones to the gentlest 
and most pathetic. To the suffering and the 
bereaved he could speak inspiring words in the 
gentlest spirit. 

As the level of Bishop Duncan's oharacter was 
a high level, so he gave men a fine illustration of 
fidelity to all the relations of life in which he 
was placed. In his twenty-second year he was 
married to Miss Medora Rice, of Union, South 
Carolina. From that day to the end of his life 
she walked all the journey by his side, and in 
her queenly character, embodying all the virtues 
of pure, quiet, loving, and noble womanhood, lies 
the secret of much of his own wonderful success. 



William Wallace Duncan. 49 



He knew it and he acknowledged it. In her he 
found the expression of the graces which sancti- 
fied in his thought the excellencies of woman's 
character and which gave him a hallowed appre- 
ciation of the wife, the mother, and the home- 
maker. His devotion to her was a holy devotion 
and he expressed it in every possible way. He 
was no less an ideal husband than an ideal father. 
In fact, his home was the earthly center of his 
life. He was a lover of home. Not that it took 
him away from the noise of the world, but sim- 
ply because its fellowships were the most pre- 
cious fellowships to him. In all the delicate and 
responsible relations of the head of the family 
he showed superior wisdom, he acted with pru- 
dent firmness, and was an example of unexcelled 
devotion. 

Beyond the home circle lies the circle of one's 
friends. Sanctified friendship is the sacred bond 
that unites the spirits of men and keeps life in an 
atmosphere that is pure and invigorating. But it 
is not given to all men to possess friendship or 
to inspire friendship. There are some desolate 
souls who lack the exalted genius of making 
friends. Cold and awkward, they drive men 
from them. When they do their best to attract 
men to them, they are most successful in driving 

4 



50 William Wallace Duncan. 



them away. They envy others the gift of mak- 
ing friends, and they even covet the friends of 
others. But the fatal incapacity to inspire friend- 
ship stays with them to make life more and more 
desolate and to drive it farther and farther into a 
despairing isolation. 

Yet there are others who draw men to them by 
a magnetism of soul which cannot be explained, 
and needs not to be explained. For friendship is 
the voice of one's own soul echoing back to him 
from the souls of his friends, it is one's self 
translated to himself through the spirits of 
others. Napoleon is quoted as saying, "Friend- 
ship is but a name. I love nobody." The heart 
that does not love can only deny that there is 
love, and the soul that has no immortal words to 
speak in the ears of others will drag its dreary 
way through the world without ever knowing the 
friendship side of it. Life is an investment and 
a return. "With what measure ye mete, it shall 
be measured to you again." Alike both in kind 
and amount is the return of the things each man 
gives forth to men. This law is constant and its 
enforcement is without exception. How often 
do we see men playing the game of politics and 
dramatizing the arts of friendship and utterly 
ignorant of the fact that their tricks are not 



William Wallace Duncan. 51 



well hidden, and what they take for faithful 
friendships in others is no more than a mockery 
of their own hypocrisies. While on the other 
hand there are those high, those genuine souls 
who play no tricks, who speak no unknown 
language, who stand in no shadow, but give out 
sincere and unreserved confidence, and with 
them friendship is no mere name or foolish fad 
among men. Like Emerson they are certain of 
both the reality and the sanctity of friendship 
which he expressed when he said: "My friends 
have come to me unsought. The great God gave 
them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affin- 
ity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather 
not I, but the Deity in me and in them both de- 
ride and cancel the thick walls of individual char- 
acter, relation, age, sex, circumstances, at which 
He usually connives, and now makes many one." 
What an infinite chasm stretched between the 
paths of the bloody warrior of France and the 
quiet sage of Concord! 

It is not given to men to make truer, stronger, 
and more loyal friends than Bishop Duncan 
made. By the affinities of his own lofty spirit 
he drew men to him, he bound them to him, and 
they were faithful to him. This was not an art 
with him, for he never sought, after the manner 



52 William Wallace Duncan. 



of the professional, to make friends. He loved 
men and they responded to him with their love. 
Of conditional friendships he knew nothing. 
Only upon righteous grounds would he contract 
friendships, and these relations could never be 
used for unholy ends or be plead as an excuse 
for questionable methods. He despised commer- 
cial friendships, and resented every suggestion of 
making an unholy use of his friendships. To 
that sickly sentimentalism which parades in the 
form of friendship and flatters every kind of 
deed and every sort of scheme lest it wound its 
friend, he was utterly a stranger. For to all the 
grave responsibilities of confidence and love he 
was steadily faithful. He reproved wrong in 
his friend, he exhorted a friend, in short, he was 
genuinely true to a friend. And he never had a 
friend who did not know him to be spotless in 
his fidelity and brave in all his dealings. Nor did 
he ever forget to do the smallest thing which 
friendship required should be done. He went 
far beyond requirements ^nd filled every possible 
office of a sanctified love. 

For days, even for weeks, before the Christmas 
holidays he gave himself to the one work of gath- 
ering and sending to many of his friends, men 
and women and children, in all parts of the coun- 



William Wallace Duncan. 53 



try tokens of greeting and good wishes. To see 
him engaged in this work of love was one of the 
most beautiful and inspiring exhibitions of 
thoughtful friendship. It was not done as a 
fad. He gave it his earnest thought. He knew 
the character of each friend and he fitted the gift 
to him. Nor would he allow any suggestion that 
such and such a gift would do. For he was not 
dealing in makeshifts. He would go again into 
the street and search diligently for what he 
thought was the best thing, not the merely admis- 
sible, and if he could not get what he wanted, 
he either sent nothing, or wrote an apology for 
what he deemed unsatisfactory, often putting the 
blame on a limited market. 

Bishop Duncan never seemed to grow old. 
There was in his nature a fine and becoming 
spirit of youth that kept the passing years from 
leaving their marks upon his magnificent face or 
taking from him a joyous interest in people of all 
ages. He was at home in the nursery, on the 
playground, in the parlor with laughing youth, 
in the counting room with burdened men, and by 
the chair of the aged. There is an intuition in 
babes that seems to guard them against the ap- 
proach of unsympathetic natures. Their little 
spirits recoil from such persons. And they also 



54 



William Wallace: Duncan. 



have the intuition which guides them in discov- 
ering and trusting a loving spirit. The verdicts 
of these intuitions are not debatable. The babes 
and the children intuitively bore witness to the 
genuineness of his soul and the purity of his 
love. They loved him, and children do not fall 
in love with unlovable men, or men who do not 
truly sympathize with them. He knew their 
language and could speak it. Any man may learn 
the vocabulary of childhood, but a vocabulary is 
no more than half of a language. One can only 
speak a language when he can feel and express 
its spirit, and the best effort at mimicry of its 
spirit will be detected by those who live in it. 
Somehow this good man kept with him his 
youthful soul which gave him admission to child- 
hood confidences. And among the most enthu- 
siastic and loyal friends he had were young men 
and young women. He never entered a home 
without gaining the lasting admiration of the 
young members of the family. 

This fine spirit of youth, taken with his spirit 
of humor and his powers of conversation, made 
him the best of company. He invited people of 
every age to talk with him. Some men by every 
expression of face, every tone of voice, every 
look of the eye dare you to open your mouth in 



William Wallace Duncan. 55 



their presence. They intimidate you, they seem 
to say that they belong to an unapproachable 
order. But with Bishop Duncan it was quite the 
contrary. There was freedom in his presence, 
though he never compromised a becoming dignity 
in order to inspire it. It was the freedom which 
one feels when he knows that superior qualities 
do not make one arrogant and put him on severe 
guard lest some one fail to discover them and 
rightly regard them. One who is certain of his 
strength is not obliged to build walls about him- 
self. There were no artificial walls about Bishop 
Duncan. He enjoyed to the fullest a joke, told 
an anecdote with exceptional success, and took 
pleasure in teasing a good friend. It was unfor- 
tunate that his humor in the form of teasing was 
not always clearly understood by some sensitive 
persons, but was, in many instances, taken with a 
degree of seriousness. And when this was true 
it gave Bishop Duncan genuine pain. He was 
too brave to wound unnecessarily any person, but 
with his friends he took the liberties of an unsus- 
pecting confidence. Nowhere did he practice this 
type of his good humor with more enthusiasm 
than in his own home upon the members of his 
own household. There was never a knife in it, 
for he never used a covered knife. 



56 William Wallace Duncan. 



In keeping with his breadth of mind and gen- 
erosity of spirit was a fine catholicity of feeling. 
He was free from the spirit of exclusiveness. 
Though a strong churchman and a loyal Metho- 
dist he entertained the most fraternal feelings 
toward other denominations, not only avoiding 
sectarian controversies, but trying to promote a 
genuine fellowship among all Christian people. 
Sectarianism was wholly distasteful to him 
whether it was in a preacher or a layman, in a 
Methodist or a Baptist or a Presbyterian. And 
as he was not sectarian in religion so he was not 
sectional in his patriotism. He was a thorough 
Southerner, and loved the traditions of the South. 
He contended for its rights, and had some active 
part in its most tragic experiences. But he was 
a nationalist, a patriotic American. All forms of 
provincialism were offensive to him. The hori- 
zon of this man was a complete circle visible at 
every point, and encircled within it were all sec- 
tions of his own country and all the nations of 
the earth. He had the cosmopolitanism of Saint 
Paul and was by every measurement of his faith 
a world-man. 

Bishop Duncan's large and sensible faith in 
mankind made him a true democrat. I have 
qualified the statement, because there are so many 



William Wallace: Duncan. 57 



ideas of democracy held by men that one scarcely; 
knows what is meant by the term when it is used, 
and what a man believes when it is applied to 
him. If democracy means the natural equality of 
men then it cannot be said that Bishop Duncan 
was democratic. For he knew that this French 
heresy was without any basis of truth, a mere 
vagary promulgated by thoughtless partisans in 
the interest of their unholy ambitions. The di- 
versities among men are facts about whose exis- 
tence there can be no denial, nor can they be 
referred entirely to the accidents of conditions or 
the artificial arrangement of society. They are 
as deep as nature, a part of nature's system. And 
to undertake to reverse this order would be inex- 
cusable folly, as it would prove a hopeless pro- 
ject. Socialism is the dream of an artificial order 
against which nature has issued its irrevocable 
edicts. Bishop Duncan had not the slightest 
socialistic taint in him and he had little patience 
with that modern type of democracy which is at 
heart pure socialism. 

Nor did he have any sympathy with that spirit 
of democracy which discredits culture and refine- 
ment and pretends to have great pride in the 
common and the careless. The commoner was 
not Bishop Duncan's conception of the ideal 



58 



William Wallace Duncan. 



democrat. He was every whit a gentleman and 
the coarse was utterly repellant to him. When 
Charles I. was tried before the court of the Com- 
mons they did not remove their hats from then- 
heads, and, when he was taken from the hall after 
the sentence of death had been passed upon him, 
the members of the court blew tobacco smoke in 
his face and threw their pipes at him. So the 
executioners of Louis XIV., animated by the 
same idea of the meaning of democracy, did not 
remove their hats during the solemn act. A de- 
mocracy that glories in vulgarity is a gigantic 
evil. And the man who must repudiate the spirit 
of the gentleman in order to assure himself of his 
democratic rights puts himself beyond the respect 
of all men who have even the slightest taste for 
civil conduct and the smallest consideration for 
virtue. It is unthinkable that Bishop Duncan 
should have tolerated such sentiments. 

And with no less positiveness did he resist that 
type of democracy which sets up the supremacy 
of the individual against the community and 
prides itself upon a rebellious spirit toward social 
order and those in authority. It is at heart tinged 
with mobocracy, a sort of modified anarchy, if it 
is at all modified in any degree. This spirit of 
an overwrought individualism has been the peril 



Wiluam Wallace Duncan. 59 



of all democratic governments, and its wide- 
spread growth in recent years, not only in politi- 
cal realms, but in ecclesiastical governments, is 
one of the most uninviting tendencies in our 
'American life. It is showing itself in every line 
of work. Organization is becoming more and 
more difficult and men are becoming less and 
less able to work contentedly within organiza- 
tion. Such a sentiment breeds discontent — un- 
wholesome, illogical, and immoral discontent 
which is subversive of sound government. 

The democracy in which Bishop Duncan be- 
lieved and which he strikingly illustrated was a 
democracy which had its taproot in a rational and 
a steadfast faith in mankind. The sincerity and 
the clearness of his mind, combined with his 
sense of justice and his unbending loyalty to 
truth, saved him from setting the merely inciden- 
tal above the essential and from judging men in 
the light of outward conditions. He believed in 
the man without regard to his ancestors, or his 
wealth or what other show he might make of non- 
essential things. "Behind fine silks and glittering 
jewels there often beats the meanest heart, while 
wrapped in homespun linsey-woolsey and unbe- 
decked with a single gem are often found God's 
tallest men and purest saints," is a sentence I 
recall from a sermon which I heard him preach 



60 William Wallace: Duncan. 



thirty years ago. He did not say this because he 
thought it was eloquent, but because in the depths 
of his heart he believed it. 'And in his associa- 
tions he demonstrated his faith. While a member 
of the South Carolina conference his friends 
did not belong to one class, but to all classes. 
The humblest circuit rider was his appreciated 
friend. As a college professor and as a bishop he 
went as gladly to the little country church as to 
the city church. His services were for men, not 
for a special class of men. He held that every 
man should have the opportunity to make of him- 
self all that he was able, and he opposed any 
scheme that tended to lessen this right, or to 
make its realization more difficult. He did not 
patronize men, he did not coddle them, he did 
not flatter their conceits, and he did not encour- 
age their weaknesses, but in a manly, brave, and 
upright way he honored them if they were worthy 
of honor, and he trusted them if they were wor- 
thy of trust, and for all, even the meanest, he 
held out the hopes of life. He believed in the 
maxim which John Marshall laid down as the 
maxim of a sound democracy, "A strict observ- 
ance of justice and public faith, and a steady ad- 
herence to virtue." Through a long career, dur- 
ing which he had large associations and dealings 



William Wallace Duncan. 61 



with men of all classes, he illustrated in a notable 
manner this principle of a true Americanism. 

His restless energy, his spirit of ceaseless ac- 
tivity, his passion for work, his unconquerable 
eagerness for a place in the front ranks of strug- 
gle give the key to his character and to his his- 
tory. They gave coloring to all his thought, to 
all his interpretations of truth and to all the 
articles of his faith. The fundamental truth in 
his religious faith was not only that God is, but 
that He is a working God. Religion is such a 
fine thing, the religious nature is such a high 
nature, that men have always showed a disposi- 
tion to remove it from the ordinary and to pro- 
tect its sanctity in temples and by solemn forms of 
worship. Indolent priests have mumbled prayers 
at gilded altars and assumed a supernatural su- 
periority to all earthly things while they have 
guarded their creeds with superstitious zeal and 
brutal intolerance. This has been the gigantic 
heresy of the ages. It has brought religion into 
disrepute and made thoughtful and serious men 
hate it as a superstitious fraud. With this con- 
ception of religion Bishop Duncan had no sym- 
pathy. It made no appeal to his respect. Had 
he lived in France in the eighteenth century he 
would have been either an infidel or a reformer, 
most likely the latter. 



62 William Wallace Duncan. 



Nor did he accent inner states of emotions as 
the chief experience in Christian life. Fifty 
years ago Methodist people put large emphasis 
upon religious ecstasy and held that certain emo- 
tions were the evidences of a religious life. The 
main question was, "Do you enjoy your religion?" 
Bishop Duncan never thought of denying the 
spiritual nature of Christianity, that it regener- 
ated the moral nature and made a new creature of 
a man. In this truth he believed with all his heart, 
but he was far from accepting many of the over- 
wrought theories of earnest though unwise men 
in their descriptions of the inner work of the 
Holy Spirit. To use his own expression he be- 
lieved in "Scriptural regeneration." However, 
the tests of it were not in periods of ecstatic joy, 
but in the fruits of a patient and godly service. 
While not denying emotionalism in religious ex- 
perience, he did not cultivate it as the chief thing, 
and, constituted as he was, he could not give it 
more than incidental importance. 

The Christian religion is not only the universal 
religion in the sense that it is the religion for 
all times and for all races and classes of men, 
but it is emphatically the universal religion in the 
sense that it addresses itself to the individual 
characteristics of each person. It is the religion 



William Wallace Duncan. 63 



for all men because it is the religion for all the 
potentially good in each man. It does not cast 
every man into a fixed mold, but it molds its 
powers within the individual mind and heart. 
It is the religion of endless originality of faith. 
The faith of Abraham and the faith of Moses 
are as different as the types of the two minds 
were different, while Paul wrote things that 
were enigmas to Peter. Bishop Duncan had a 
clear, a positive, and uncompromising faith. But 
it was cast in the mold of his own personality. 
He did not partake of the modern broadness of 
mind resting upon a spirit of doubt which Fittch- 
ett describes as, "vague, loitering, evasive, and 
strangely contented,'' but he partook of the Paul- 
ine type of positive and definite belief. 

His Christian character did not rest upon an 
elaborate creed in which he had worked out to 
his own satisfaction the difficulties of theology. 
On the contrary it rested upon a very simple 
creed. "If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross and follow 
me," was with him the main thing, the starting 
point of all Christian life. In his own thought 
he reduced the whole question to a matter of the 
relation of each man to Christ, not a logical 
relation but a vital relation. Has a man wholly 



64 William Wallace Duncan. 



submerged his own will beneath the will of God 
as that will is made known through Christ? Is 
this allegiance invincible and eternal? Is it veri- 
fied within the consciousness by a sense of recon- 
ciliation and a filial consciousness attested by the 
Holy Spirit? Is the one uncompromising aim 
of life to build up in the earth the things which 
Christ seeks to establish among men? These 
were the chief things in his creed, the constant 
aim of his preaching. 

Lacking the speculative disposition of mind he 
naturally could take but small interest in the 
speculations of theology. As a matter of fact, 
he did not think these things were of any seri- 
ous or vital concern. Some men may think his 
attitude of mind to these subjects and theories 
incorrect. I do not discuss that question. Bishop 
Duncan would not have discussed it. He would 
have graciously allowed the judgment as to his 
position. Higher criticism did not greatly dis- 
turb his mind. He simply dismissed it as one 
of the academic problems which was in a chaotic 
state and which might be left to those who felt 
that the universe depended upon its settlement. 
He did not feel that way about it and he did 
not worry himself over it. The general attitude 
of his mind was that of an unshaken faith in 



WiujAM Wallace Duncan. 65 



truth and he believed that in the end truth would 
come forth, however chaotic the situation might 
appear at any given point in the stage of its 
development. He had very much the same atti- 
tude of mind toward the proposition to revise the 
[Articles of Faith of his church. He simply 
could not become intensely interested in the ques- 
tion because, from his point of view, he could not 
see anything of vital importance in it. He thought 
the change would do no good and he did not 
see that it would do any great hurt. According 
to his observation those Articles had done no 
harm in the past, they would not likely do much 
in the future, simply because the main thing 
with Methodism was not the making of creeds 
but the redemption of men. He did not think 
the proposition worth the while. He asked, 
"What good will it do to change them? ,, and 
when he in turn was asked, "What harm will it 
do?" he replied, "None, so far as I see." That 
was his position, a position which had its moral 
and its logical consistency in the constitutional 
methods and character of his mind. 

In all these matters he showed a fine poise of 
mind. While he was in every respect far re- 
moved from being anything of a free thinker, 
he was, nevertheless, a generous minded man 



66 William Wallace Duncan. 



and had a very distinct breadth of mind. He had 
tolerance; however, not the tolerance of the un- 
believer, but the tolerance of the strong believer. 
Charles James Fox laid down the formula, "The 
only foundation for tolerance is a degree of 
skepticism." Measured by this standard it was 
impossible for Bishop Duncan to have developed 
the grace of tolerance, for he believed something 
and he had to believe something. It was the 
necessity of his nature. The formula of Fox is 
not true. There is a tolerance that rests upon 
positive convictions of truth, and is yet marked 
by a genuine sympathy with those who honestly 
do not see the truth as you see it. Such a 
difference is no occasion for bitter warfare. It 
is the occasion for patience and forbearance. 
Robert E. Lee was never bitter toward the North, 
yet he was never untrue to the South. And the 
tragedy of Calvary is an eternal revelation of a 
grace that has no end of sympathy and love and 
help for those who maliciously oppose truth and 
the truth teacher. This grace was conspicuously 
illustrated in the character of Bishop Duncan, 
not in one direction, but in all directions. He 
believed in truth, he believed in progress, he 
believed that progress could only come through 
truth, he did not believe that all truth had been 



William Wallace Duncan. 67 



discovered, and he welcomed the man who 
brought to light some hitherto unknown truth, 
or gave the world a deeper and a wider interpre- 
tation of some old truth. 



After long years of heroic service, on March 2, 
1908, Bishop Duncan's final hour came. The last 
moment was struck, and the splendid life came 
quietly to its close. A vast multitude went with 
sorrowing hearts to the cemetery and stood with 
uncovered heads as the body of the noble man 
was put in the tomb. In the silence and grief of 
that solemn hour was paid the fullest tribute of 
love and esteem which friends could pay his sa- 
cred memory. Now that death has removed from 
him all earthly tokens of human honors and 
vestments of official dignity, and the light of 
eternity falls full orbed upon him, that which is 
greatest and sublimest is the man himself. He 
rises high above earthly position, he towers above 
temporal honors, he stands enthroned amid the 
glow of a majestic personality, while his whole 
public career pays everlasting tribute to the sav- 
ing glory of divine love and celebrates the im- 
mortal dignity of human living. For like Glad- 
stone he was "inspired with the belief that life 



68 William Wallace Duncan. 



is a great and noble calling; not a mean and 
grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through 
as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny;" 
and so he proved it to be in all the walks along 
which he moved. 



Sty? ^pmatt Printers 
Ettrljam, NmrtI? fflarattna 



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